Guidance for theory building in tourism research : Finding differences as a starting point

This short communication offers guidance for building theories that researchers and students in tourism studies can use. The approach to theory building presented in this paper is informed by the work of the scholars who received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2024. By reinterpreting their work as both a meta-theoretical framework (or theory of theory building) and an explanatory multiple-case study, this guidance is designed to be accessible and practical for tourism researchers and students. The central message of this paper is that theory building begins with finding differences in phenomena that may appear similar. It also requires reviewing existing theories across the diverse disciplines on which tourism researchers often rely, to find discrepancies between theory and empirical reality or tensions among competing theories.